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How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades? How many ha

by darawk 4y ago

How many rich people and fund managers around the world have been throwing money at engineers they thought were smart for the past several decades? How many have succeeded on the scale Elon has? "Throwing money at smart engineers" is not a novel idea. Executing it well is extremely hard, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades.

code_runner 4y ago
I responded to another with something similar… Throwing money at people and saying “I want these charts to be customizable” vs “let’s land a rocket booster, it’s ok if a few blow up, we can test it live” will get VERY different levels of passion/expertise
georgeg23 4y ago
The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X
- fsdjkflsjfsoij 4y ago
  The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Mike saw Elon was good at recruiting Silicon Valley talent and selling the whole "save humanity by going to Mars" story (but even that was Mike's idea with Orbital).
  - trident5000 4y ago
    "Elon hires people he doesnt do all the work!" Yes thats why you hire people...to not do all the work. Im pretty sure Elon is aware of this.
  - devmor 4y ago
    There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.
    - nsxwolf 4y ago
      That just shows confidence isn't always a predictor of success. They made a bad call, quite obviously.
      - devmor 4y ago
        No, it does not. His plan was to build greenhouses on mars. Their rejection of his idea is what inspired the pivot to build rockets instead.
    - googlryas 4y ago
      What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - devmor 4y ago
        No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.
        googlryas 4y ago
        Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.
        devmor 4y ago
        Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.
- darawk 4y ago
  Even if we were to accept that as true as stated, which I don't, that doesn't explain Paypal and Tesla. Even if you think this Michael Griffin guy did everything - why did Elon bet on him? Why didn't anyone else? Tons of people had the money to do it at the same time. None of them did.
  - kiba 4y ago
    Nobody did everything. We all build upon the work of giants, Elon Musk and Michael Griffin included.
    - trident5000 4y ago
      Musk talks about his employees and how critical they were/are constantly. This whole notion that "Musk didnt do it all" is such a clown argument because theres no other form of attack from people who simply dont like him and his politics.
- trident5000 4y ago
  Its almost like Elon hired him knowing hes smart or something...
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    ....and Griffin gave him ~$2B of taxpayer money. (DARPA and COTS contracts before SpaceX flew a single rocket and CRS for Falcon 9). All discussed in the link above.
    - trident5000 4y ago
      Why tax payer money? Where did that part come from.
- baby 4y ago
  There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit
  - andy_ppp 4y ago
    For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.
    - pishpash 4y ago
      Why do you assume the hard work to Twitter time ratio isn't the same as other people, but scaled up?
    - mjr00 4y ago
      It's absolutely a part of his job, though. One of the most valuable parts of Musk is his personal brand. He can raise money and hire talent in large part because he's a household name. Everything he does, from naming his child X Æ A-12 to producing a house track, is to proliferate the public perception that he is an eccentric genius, a modern-day polymath like the Da Vincis and Franklins of old. It may not seem like "real" work, but if Elon Musk and I both started different companies on the same day, who do you think is going to attract funding and top talent more quickly?
      - toss1 4y ago
        If so, he's doing an absolutely fabulous job of trashing his reputation inside of a week. Musk can be great when he does his homework and first principles analysis. It is obvious he hasn't done it here. Having advertisers take a huge step back because they seek minimal uncertainty and you spend the entire week maximizing uncertainty is bad (& shows incompetence). Having advertisers drop campaigns literally in the middle of the call to sell next year's baseline because you aren't even close to prepared for the questions is deeply arrogant incompetence [0]. Threatening "thermonuclear name and shame" on your advertisers [1] — your primary customers — is unnecessarily showing the entire world that you've lost it. Same goes for starting the week with the now-infamous claim that "a bunch of activists" are chasing away the revenue (would Musk accept that kind of excuse from any exec reporting to him?)[2], then having it explained WHY they are actually pausing by one of the people in the meeting [3], then blocking the guy you just spoke with the day before... I cannot begin to see how any of this is remotely good for Musk's brand. He's showing the world in real-time that he's in over his head, has no idea what is the business model and the key elements, and just thrashing about blaming everyone else, when literally he is entirely to blame for the chaos. Oh, and I've yet to read the other HN Pg1 headline [5] that Musk/Twitter is already asking some of the people it fired yesterday to return! If you can actually explain how any of this is remotely good for Musk, Twitter, or anyone, I'd be interested to hear it... Because it looks like he's trying really hard to sink Twitter faster than Digg sunk. (There's actually a good argument that his initial intent was to sink Twitter when he first made the comment and offer, to maximize uncertainty and tank their '23 sales, but then he was forced to buy it b/c he was too foolish to even have a proper excape clause in the contract, and here we are) [0] https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 [1] https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 [3] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 [4] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  Why there has to be "one mastermind guy"? It seems safe to say that you need to dovetail at least dozens of people to have successful rocket launching, well, startup?
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Tom Mueller (recruited by Mike Griffin) also deserves credit. SpaceX hasn't built a reliable rocket engine since Tom left. But Mike probably was #1 reason for SpaceX success.
    - mirekrusin 4y ago
      It's hard to argue that SpaceX wouldn't happen without Elon's mom.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Why was Elon selected to become the richest person in the world and not one of the any thousands of other billionaires out there?
voxl 4y ago
They typically just purchase the company instead. See: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple. Let's not forget that Elon Musk's real success has been in marketing. He has created a cult of personality, claimed his efforts are for the good of humanity (yet to be seen, especially with the way he treats his labor force, i.e. horribly). It's not a shock that Tesla stock is a _meme stock_. It is because of Elon's marketing. Let's not even get into his market manipulation.
- darawk 4y ago
  > Let's not forget that Elon Musk's real success has been in marketing. He has obviously been highly successful at marketing. But his "real success" has been in delivering products like useful electric cars and reusable rockets that didn't previously exist. His marketing skills help with that, but all the marketing in the world isn't going to sell a product that doesn't exist (except in crypto).
  - Swenrekcah 4y ago
    I think those aren’t incompatible views. Undeniably Elon’s success is his tremendous wealth, the basis of which are two very valuable companies that the cofounded and has as CEO marketed brilliantly, if not always honestly. He obviously knows a lot about what people to work with. It is highly unlikely he knows how to build or design almost anything Spacex or Tesla makes. He knows a lot about everything they make of course, and can get more detailed briefings and information on it that anyone, but he didn’t make it. So the wealth and the successful companies are his success sure, but his greatest personal accomplishments are obviously his marketing skills.
    - darawk 4y ago
      I don't know how you're measuring "greatest" but I certainly consider his greatest accomplishments to be putting together, betting on, and operating the companies that produced these products. Of course he doesn't know how to build a Tesla batter or a SpaceX rocket himself - probably no one person does. These were very difficult industries, industries that were extremely contrarian to bet on when he did. Making the financial bet alone would be a great accomplishment for any normal person. Peter Thiel is a famous investor for making far less contrarian and far less successful bets without operating anything except Paypal. Musk's bets were far more concentrated, and he chose the personnel, operated the companies, made the strategic decisions, and yes, also marketed them brilliantly. But he only got to flex those marketing muscles because he spent a decade assembling, managing, and financing the teams that built the product in the first place.
BryantD 4y ago
Do you know the NFL betting scam? It's awesome. Here's how it works. You choose 1024 people, and you send all of them a prediction about one upcoming sports game, free of charge. 50% get one prediction, 50% get the other. Next week, you have 512 people who think you can guess pretty good. You pick another game. 256 people get one prediction, 256 get the other. The following week, 256 people think you got two in a row correct. You send 128 of them one prediction, etc. etc. etc. When you're down to 1 person, maybe they'll pay you for the next prediction. A track record of success is not sufficient evidence, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades and especially when even the first random success (selling Zip2 to an over-eager AltaVista) paid off so well.
- mirekrusin 4y ago
  I think you clicked the wrong link, it sounds like you wanted to answer some crypto-currency speculation thread.
- luckylion 4y ago
  So, what are the 1024 companies Musk poured lots of money in to get 2 or 3 massive hits since it's all just a game of numbers and chance?
  - slg 4y ago
    It might not be 1024, but he probably has more failures than successes: Solar City, Neuralink, Boring Company, Hyperloop (he decided not to turn this into a company, but he wasted his and his other companies' resources on this so I think it is fair to consider it a Musk failure).
    - darawk 4y ago
      Solar City isn't a failure, it's part of Tesla now. Still selling panels, as far as I know. Boring company is also not yet a failure, and has recently built several tunnels. Neuralink is an early stage research company and is still humming along. It may fail some day, but it certainly hasn't failed yet. As for Hyperloop, he specifically said he wasn't going to build it, and several companies are still working on it, including in China: https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-maglev-vactrain-hyperloop https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-maglev-vactrain-hyperloo... None of these things are "failures". They may become failures one day. It'd be crazy if some of them didn't. But you can't count a research project as a failure just because it doesn't have a product yet.

by darawk 4y ago

code_runner 4y ago

I responded to another with something similar… Throwing money at people and saying “I want these charts to be customizable” vs “let’s land a rocket booster, it’s ok if a few blow up, we can test it live” will get VERY different levels of passion/expertise

georgeg23 4y ago

The mastermind behind SpaceX is not Elon. It's this guy: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career He gave Elon the ideas, initial team, govt connections, contracts, etc.. Elon was the company jester. Rocket landing work was taken from the DC-X

fsdjkflsjfsoij 4y ago
The criticisms are getting more and more comical. Michael is a friend of Elon and trusted Elon with many of his ideas and contacts. I'm sure Musk would say as much. Do you think Michael was sharing these ideas and contacts with just anyone? Why do you think he specifically chose to work with Elon?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Mike saw Elon was good at recruiting Silicon Valley talent and selling the whole "save humanity by going to Mars" story (but even that was Mike's idea with Orbital).
- trident5000 4y ago
  "Elon hires people he doesnt do all the work!" Yes thats why you hire people...to not do all the work. Im pretty sure Elon is aware of this.
- devmor 4y ago
  There's nothing comical about it. They went to two different Russian firms to partner with before it was even called SpaceX and were turned down because Elon kept running his mouth on subjects he didn't understand and they lost all confidence in the project.
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    That just shows confidence isn't always a predictor of success. They made a bad call, quite obviously.
    - devmor 4y ago
      No, it does not. His plan was to build greenhouses on mars. Their rejection of his idea is what inspired the pivot to build rockets instead.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    What was he running his mouth about? Crazy stuff like landing boosters back at the pad, or on barges in the middle of the Atlantic?
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - devmor 4y ago
      No, his plan was to build greenhouses on Mars.
      - googlryas 4y ago
        Perhaps that's just because he was talking to people who think another literal moonshot was a figurative moonshot.
        devmor 4y ago
        Er, no. That was his stated goal as a member of the Mars Society's board of directors when these talks happened. He wanted to purchase a Dnepr ICBM and retrofit it for that purpose. When the deal was rejected, he discussed building his own rockets with Michael Griffin.
darawk 4y ago
Even if we were to accept that as true as stated, which I don't, that doesn't explain Paypal and Tesla. Even if you think this Michael Griffin guy did everything - why did Elon bet on him? Why didn't anyone else? Tons of people had the money to do it at the same time. None of them did.
- kiba 4y ago
  Nobody did everything. We all build upon the work of giants, Elon Musk and Michael Griffin included.
  - trident5000 4y ago
    Musk talks about his employees and how critical they were/are constantly. This whole notion that "Musk didnt do it all" is such a clown argument because theres no other form of attack from people who simply dont like him and his politics.
trident5000 4y ago
Its almost like Elon hired him knowing hes smart or something...
- georgeg23 4y ago
  ....and Griffin gave him ~$2B of taxpayer money. (DARPA and COTS contracts before SpaceX flew a single rocket and CRS for Falcon 9). All discussed in the link above.
  - trident5000 4y ago
    Why tax payer money? Where did that part come from.
baby 4y ago
There's really a recurring thread here, or elsewhere, which is that elon doesn't do shit, and deserve much credit for his success. To me he seems like a hard worker, and deserves credit
- andy_ppp 4y ago
  For someone who claims to work extremely hard he seems to spend a lot of time antagonising people on Twitter.
  - pishpash 4y ago
    Why do you assume the hard work to Twitter time ratio isn't the same as other people, but scaled up?
  - mjr00 4y ago
    It's absolutely a part of his job, though. One of the most valuable parts of Musk is his personal brand. He can raise money and hire talent in large part because he's a household name. Everything he does, from naming his child X Æ A-12 to producing a house track, is to proliferate the public perception that he is an eccentric genius, a modern-day polymath like the Da Vincis and Franklins of old. It may not seem like "real" work, but if Elon Musk and I both started different companies on the same day, who do you think is going to attract funding and top talent more quickly?
    - toss1 4y ago
      If so, he's doing an absolutely fabulous job of trashing his reputation inside of a week. Musk can be great when he does his homework and first principles analysis. It is obvious he hasn't done it here. Having advertisers take a huge step back because they seek minimal uncertainty and you spend the entire week maximizing uncertainty is bad (& shows incompetence). Having advertisers drop campaigns literally in the middle of the call to sell next year's baseline because you aren't even close to prepared for the questions is deeply arrogant incompetence [0]. Threatening "thermonuclear name and shame" on your advertisers [1] — your primary customers — is unnecessarily showing the entire world that you've lost it. Same goes for starting the week with the now-infamous claim that "a bunch of activists" are chasing away the revenue (would Musk accept that kind of excuse from any exec reporting to him?)[2], then having it explained WHY they are actually pausing by one of the people in the meeting [3], then blocking the guy you just spoke with the day before... I cannot begin to see how any of this is remotely good for Musk's brand. He's showing the world in real-time that he's in over his head, has no idea what is the business model and the key elements, and just thrashing about blaming everyone else, when literally he is entirely to blame for the chaos. Oh, and I've yet to read the other HN Pg1 headline [5] that Musk/Twitter is already asking some of the people it fired yesterday to return! If you can actually explain how any of this is remotely good for Musk, Twitter, or anyone, I'd be interested to hear it... Because it looks like he's trying really hard to sink Twitter faster than Digg sunk. (There's actually a good argument that his initial intent was to sink Twitter when he first made the comment and offer, to maximize uncertainty and tank their '23 sales, but then he was forced to buy it b/c he was too foolish to even have a proper excape clause in the contract, and here we are) [0] https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1588696157794242560 [1] https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1588718759098851328 [2] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1588538640401018880 [3] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588599808587345921 [4] https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 https://twitter.com/LouPas/status/1588622182066057216 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808
mirekrusin 4y ago
Why there has to be "one mastermind guy"? It seems safe to say that you need to dovetail at least dozens of people to have successful rocket launching, well, startup?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  Tom Mueller (recruited by Mike Griffin) also deserves credit. SpaceX hasn't built a reliable rocket engine since Tom left. But Mike probably was #1 reason for SpaceX success.
  - mirekrusin 4y ago
    It's hard to argue that SpaceX wouldn't happen without Elon's mom.
googlryas 4y ago
Why was Elon selected to become the richest person in the world and not one of the any thousands of other billionaires out there?

voxl 4y ago

They typically just purchase the company instead. See: Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple. Let's not forget that Elon Musk's real success has been in marketing. He has created a cult of personality, claimed his efforts are for the good of humanity (yet to be seen, especially with the way he treats his labor force, i.e. horribly). It's not a shock that Tesla stock is a _meme stock_. It is because of Elon's marketing. Let's not even get into his market manipulation.

darawk 4y ago
> Let's not forget that Elon Musk's real success has been in marketing. He has obviously been highly successful at marketing. But his "real success" has been in delivering products like useful electric cars and reusable rockets that didn't previously exist. His marketing skills help with that, but all the marketing in the world isn't going to sell a product that doesn't exist (except in crypto).
- Swenrekcah 4y ago
  I think those aren’t incompatible views. Undeniably Elon’s success is his tremendous wealth, the basis of which are two very valuable companies that the cofounded and has as CEO marketed brilliantly, if not always honestly. He obviously knows a lot about what people to work with. It is highly unlikely he knows how to build or design almost anything Spacex or Tesla makes. He knows a lot about everything they make of course, and can get more detailed briefings and information on it that anyone, but he didn’t make it. So the wealth and the successful companies are his success sure, but his greatest personal accomplishments are obviously his marketing skills.
  - darawk 4y ago
    I don't know how you're measuring "greatest" but I certainly consider his greatest accomplishments to be putting together, betting on, and operating the companies that produced these products. Of course he doesn't know how to build a Tesla batter or a SpaceX rocket himself - probably no one person does. These were very difficult industries, industries that were extremely contrarian to bet on when he did. Making the financial bet alone would be a great accomplishment for any normal person. Peter Thiel is a famous investor for making far less contrarian and far less successful bets without operating anything except Paypal. Musk's bets were far more concentrated, and he chose the personnel, operated the companies, made the strategic decisions, and yes, also marketed them brilliantly. But he only got to flex those marketing muscles because he spent a decade assembling, managing, and financing the teams that built the product in the first place.

BryantD 4y ago

Do you know the NFL betting scam? It's awesome. Here's how it works. You choose 1024 people, and you send all of them a prediction about one upcoming sports game, free of charge. 50% get one prediction, 50% get the other. Next week, you have 512 people who think you can guess pretty good. You pick another game. 256 people get one prediction, 256 get the other. The following week, 256 people think you got two in a row correct. You send 128 of them one prediction, etc. etc. etc. When you're down to 1 person, maybe they'll pay you for the next prediction. A track record of success is not sufficient evidence, especially when cash has been cheap for the past two decades and especially when even the first random success (selling Zip2 to an over-eager AltaVista) paid off so well.

mirekrusin 4y ago
I think you clicked the wrong link, it sounds like you wanted to answer some crypto-currency speculation thread.
luckylion 4y ago
So, what are the 1024 companies Musk poured lots of money in to get 2 or 3 massive hits since it's all just a game of numbers and chance?
- slg 4y ago
  It might not be 1024, but he probably has more failures than successes: Solar City, Neuralink, Boring Company, Hyperloop (he decided not to turn this into a company, but he wasted his and his other companies' resources on this so I think it is fair to consider it a Musk failure).
  - darawk 4y ago
    Solar City isn't a failure, it's part of Tesla now. Still selling panels, as far as I know. Boring company is also not yet a failure, and has recently built several tunnels. Neuralink is an early stage research company and is still humming along. It may fail some day, but it certainly hasn't failed yet. As for Hyperloop, he specifically said he wasn't going to build it, and several companies are still working on it, including in China: https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-maglev-vactrain-hyperloop https://futurism.com/the-byte/china-maglev-vactrain-hyperloo... None of these things are "failures". They may become failures one day. It'd be crazy if some of them didn't. But you can't count a research project as a failure just because it doesn't have a product yet.